Liseberg ads cleared from 'insulting Greece', still in trouble for stealing Jill Greenberg's style

We reported earlier that the Liseberg amusement park campaign "Offends Greece"... And I'm not sure if the country with the fledging economy was hoping for a handout, but they took their case to the Reklamombusdman in Sweden. The RO has found the Liseberg campaign 'not guilty' .

'The bathing suit King' Panos Papadopoulos, who once had a famous cross dresser model his bikinis, is quoted in Resumé stating:

”This is an outrageous message from Liseberg. How can you make fun of another country to promote your own amusement park? It goes against all the unwritten laws.”

I'd look it up but; 'unwritten'.

The posters were actually vandalized too. All over social media, people were encouraged to sticker over the billboards with this message, in order to hijack the campaign that made it OK to stay at home to instead spread the message about child poverty in Sweden:
"242,000 children in Sweden can not afford Liseberg - so who the hell cares about your crappy warranty?"

The advertising ombudsman, however, wasn't fazed at all by these ads.

"Advertising Ombudsman's opinion committee finds that the advertisement is not offensive, utilizing misfortune or suffering or is designed in conflict with the requirements for special care to be taken."

Don't despair, dear protestors, there's another way you can get this campaign.

The photographs look pretty much exactly like Jill Greenberg's "End Times" a famously controversial series of children's portraits as they are depicted in emotional distress. Her style is popular in Scandinavia, with it selling everything from angel hair pasta & convenience stores, to Admeta, who forgot to get the rights to that photo, woopsie.

When you copy a style so precisely you might call it demo love but lawyers call it copyright infringement.

You make it even worse if you first contact the original artist, then decide to go ahead and do this execution without their professional help. Like when Toshiba copied Simon Faithfull's chairs in space, or when Forever 21 contacted Chris O'Shea and then went ahead doing his thing, but without him.
Since this sort of thing has backfired too often, people now think as long as you don't phone the artist up it's OK to copy their work.
In Collateral Damage: How Free Culture destroys advertising we try to pinpoint exactly when and why this profession became so unprofessional.

So, were Forsman and Bodenfors totally unaware of this crying toddler style being a Jill Greenberg series? Unpossible, googling crying toddler will bring these images and her name up as the controversy it caused in 2006 also made it her signature series.

Also, Pål Eneroth from Forsman and Bodenfors, the Art Director on the campaign, has been in touch with Jill Greenberg about these photos. These images were in fact present in the mood board. Possibly even in the mockups... And that's how demo love happens people, when the client wants what you sold them, but won't pay for the original artists work.

Forsman and Bodenfors should know better. Though someone at their office said "you can't patent a style" which will give you an idea of how confused they are right now. Copyright != patent, people. See also; trademark infringement is not copyright infringement.

Sadly, this the norm in most of the world these days where art school kids are awarded for plagiarizing, and H&M sell designers work without ever paying the designer for it until a shitstorm on twitter makes them apologize. In the land of The Pirate Bay, "copyright" is a topic full of confusion.